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An 87-year-old Indian-origin man from the north east of England will become one of the first people in the world to get a vaccine against COVID-19 when he receives his Pfizer/BioNTech jab at a hospital in Newcastle on Tuesday. Hari Shukla from Tyne and Wear said he feels it is his duty to receive his first of the two-dose vaccine, a moment UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson hailed as a "huge step forward" as Tuesday was dubbed "V-Day" or Vaccine Day in the UK. "I'm so pleased we are hopefully coming towards the end of this pandemic and I am delighted to be doing my bit by having the vaccine, I feel it is my duty to do so and do whatever I can to help," said Shukla. "Having been in contact with the NHS (National Health Service), I know how hard they all work and the greatest respect for them - they have a heart of gold and I am grateful for everything they have done to keep us safe during the pandemic," he said. Shukla was notified by the NHS based on the criteria set by the UK's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation as part of a phased rollout plan based on those at the highest risk of death from the deadly virus. People aged 80 and over, care home workers as well as NHS workers who are at higher risk will be first in line to receive the "life-saving jab". "Today marks a huge step forward in the UK's fight against coronavirus, as we begin delivering the vaccine to the first patients across the whole country. I am immensely proud of the scientists who developed the vaccine, members of the public who took part in trials, and the NHS who have worked tirelessly to prepare for rollout," said Johnson. However, the UK PM struck a note of caution to warn that mass vaccination will take time and urged the public to remain "clear-eyed" and continue to follow the lockdown rules over the winter months ahead. The NHS said it is undertaking the biggest and most highly anticipated immunisation campaign in history at 50 hospital hubs, with more starting vaccinations over the coming weeks and months as the programme ramps up after the first set of doses arrived from <keyword id="44612" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Pfizer">Pfizer</keyword>'s manufacturing site in Belgium. "We will look back on today, V-day, as a key moment in our fight back against this terrible disease, and I am proud our health services across the United Kingdom are about to embark on our largest ever vaccination programme," said UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock. "With over-80s and frontline health and care staff receiving their vaccinations from today, the whole country will breathe a collective sigh of relief as our most vulnerable loved ones start to be given protection from the virus. Now's the time to sit tight and remain patient until you get notified by the NHS that it's time for your vaccination," he said, adding that the light at the end of the tunnel is visible but there is still a long way to go. Since the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine got the green light from the UK's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) last week, the NHS said its workers have been working around the clock to manage the large-scale logistical challenge of deploying the vaccine. "Coronavirus is the greatest health challenge in NHS history, taking loved ones from us and disrupting every part of our lives," said Sir Simon Stevens, NHS Chief Executive. "The deployment of this vaccine marks a decisive turning point in the battle with the pandemic. NHS vaccination programmes which have successfully helped overcome tuberculosis, polio, and smallpox, now turn their focus to coronavirus. NHS staff are proud to be leading the way as the first health service in the world to begin vaccination with this COVID jab," he said. The Pfizer/BionTech formula is an mRNA vaccine that uses a tiny fragment of genetic code from the pandemic virus to teach the body how to fight Covid-19 and build immunity. It is delivered in two doses of 21 days apart and, according to experts, it has shown a strong immunity response kicking in after seven days of the second dose. The MHRA has stressed it has been cleared for mass rollout only after "rigorous" safety tests despite the process being speeded up due to the urgency of finding an effective vaccine against a pandemic which has wreaked havoc around the world. NHS national medical director, Professor Stephen Powis, has warned that the roll out of a vaccine will be a "marathon" not a sprint. The Pfizer vaccine needs to be stored at -70C before being thawed out and can only be moved four times within that cold chain before being used. General Practitioners (GPs) and other primary care staff have also been put on standby to start delivering the jab on a phased basis. Vaccination centres treating large numbers of patients in sporting venues and conference centres will subsequently start up when further supplies of vaccine come on stream, with a bulk of the rollout expected in the early part of the New Year.

India-origin man will be among the first to get Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine in UK

By Yoshita Singh United Nations, Jul 7 () Global outbreaks like COVID-19 will become more common and increasingly prevalent if countries do not take effective steps to curb zoonotic diseases that pass from animals to humans, a report by the UN has said. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) on Monday launched the report- 'Preventing the next pandemic: Zoonotic diseases and how to break the chain of transmission'. "People look back to the influenza pandemic of 1918–1919 and think that such disease outbreaks only happen once in a century," head of scientific assessments at UNEP Maarten Kappelle said. "But that's no longer true. If we don't restore the balance between the natural world and the human one, these outbreaks will become increasingly prevalent," he said. UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen said that as nations seek to build back better after COVID-19, "we need to fully understand the transmission of zoonoses, the threats they pose to human health and how to minimise the risk of further devastating outbreaks. "COVID-19 is one of the worst zoonotic diseases, but it is not the first. Ebola, SARS, MERS, HIV, Lyme disease, Rift Valley fever and Lassa fever preceded it. In the last century we have seen at least six major outbreaks of novel coronaviruses," she said. Zoonotic diseases are infections that jump between animals and humans, some of which have led to severe illnesses and deaths. The coronavirus outbreak has so far claimed 500,000 lives globally. It originated from a wildlife food market in China's Wuhan city. The Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) or bird flu in 1996, Nipah virus infection in 1998, Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003 and the Swine acute diarrhoea syndrome (SADS) in 2016 all emerged in Guangdong, China, the report's data said. She said nations need to invest in ending the over-exploitation of wildlife and other natural resources, farming sustainably, reversing land degradation and protecting ecosystem health. "We were warned that the current pandemic was a matter of if, not when. It is a human failing that we predict but not prepare. Now we must become more proactive to avoid another pandemic and address endemic zoonotic diseases. This means recognising that human health, animal health and planetary health cannot be separated, and planning our responses accordingly," she said. The report said that 60 per cent of the 1,400 microbes known to infect humans originated in animals. It also noted that apart from contagions like COVID-19, neglected zoonotic diseases such as anthrax, bovine tuberculosis, rabies and Japanese encephalitis kill at least two million people every year, mostly in developing countries, which have communities with complex development problems, high dependence on livestock and proximity to wildlife. Zoonotic diseases have plagued societies since Neolithic times and were responsible for some of history's deadliest pandemics, including the bubonic plague of the late Middle Ages and the influenza pandemic of the early twentieth century. UNEP noted that as the world's population edges towards 8 billion, rampant development is putting humans and animals in increasingly close quarters, making it easier for diseases to vault between species. Andersen added that growth in humanity and its activity is largely to blame for increasing frequency of zoonotic diseases. She said meat production has increased by 260 per cent in 50 years, agriculture has intensified, infrastructure expanded and resources extracted at the expense of wild spaces. Dams, irrigation and factory farms are linked to 25 per cent of infectious diseases in humans. Travel, transport and food supply chains have erased borders and distances. Climate change has contributed to the spread of pathogens. "The end result is that people and animals, with the diseases they carry, are closer than ever," she said. Eric Fèvre, a professor of veterinary infectious diseases at the University of Liverpool and a jointly appointed ILRI researcher said, "as we exploit more marginal areas, we are creating opportunities for transmission. There is an increasing risk of seeing bigger epidemics and, eventually, a pandemic of the COVID-19 type as our footprint on the world expands." The report also noted that cost of zoonotic epidemics is steep. The International Monetary Fund has predicted that COVID-19 alone will cause the global economy to contract by 3 per cent this year, wiping out USD 9 trillion in productivity through 2021. But even in the two decades before the pandemic, the World Bank estimated that zoonotic diseases had direct costs of more than USD 100 billion. In order to prevent future outbreaks, countries need a coordinated, science-backed response to emerging zoonotic diseases, says Delia Grace, lead author of the report as well as a veterinary epidemiologist at ILRI and professor of food safety at the UK's Natural Resources Institute. UNEP and ILRI are urging governments to embrace an inter-sectoral and interdisciplinary approach called One Health. It calls on states not only to buttress their animal as well as human healthcare systems, but also to address factors - like environmental degradation and increased demand for meat – that make it easier for diseases to jump species. Co-author of the assessment and UNEP's Chief of Wildlife Doreen Robinson says it's also important for governments to better understand how zoonotic diseases work. That could help the world avoid another pandemic on the scale of COVID-19. YAS RS AKJ RS RS

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India-origin man will be among the first to get Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine in UK

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